security agent's phishing simulation used real employee emails by mistake

security agent's phishing simulation used real employee emails by mistake

TL;DR

The phishing simulation sent to real employee addresses instead of the test cohort. Stop the campaign immediately, notify the affected employees, and add a recipient allowlist to the simulation tooling. Simulations must be incapable of reaching real inboxes by default.

security agent's phishing simulation used real employee emails by mistake

Steps

1. Stop the campaign immediately. Expected: No more emails go out.

2. Notify the affected employees: it was a simulation, no action needed, sorry for the alarm. Expected: The confusion is contained.

3. Find how the real addresses got in: wrong list, bad filter, manual error. Expected: The cause is named.

4. Add a recipient allowlist: the simulation tooling can only send to the test cohort. Expected: Real inboxes are unreachable by default.

5. Review the simulation's approval process; this needed a second pair of eyes. Expected: The process has a gate.

When to use

• simulation emails reach real inboxes
• the recipient list was wrong
• setting up phishing simulations

When not to use

• the recipients were the intended test cohort (then it worked)
• the emails were clearly labeled as simulation (still contain it, but lower stakes)
• no simulation was running (then it is a real phish; incident response instead)

Tool compatibility

• any phishing simulation platform
• test cohorts

Variant phrasings

• "phishing simulation real emails"
• "simulation sent to real employees"
• "phishing test wrong recipients"

Why it happens

Phishing simulations are designed to deceive, which is exactly why a targeting mistake is so damaging: real employees get a realistic phish from their own security team. Trust in the security program drops, and the next real phish gets reported less. The tooling must make the wrong recipients unreachable, not just unlikely.

Edge cases

• the notification must be fast; rumors outrun corrections
• the allowlist needs an owner and a refresh process
• measure the trust impact; the simulation program may need a pause

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_72j34j9KyEYvAgN6GCc-MQ